SKETCHES OF WILD ORCHIDS IN GUIANA. 
45 
These are all comparatively low-growing plants ; but there 
are others which, springing higher, sparsely occupy the whole 
space between floor and roof. Here and there a few shapeless 
bushes, hardly clothed by scanty leaves, seem languishing for 
want of light. Here and there—though partly hidden by 
hanging dead leaves and fruits, mingled with hanging ferns and 
climbing Aroids—the massive column-like stem of a “ Troolie 
Palm” (Mimicaria saccifera, Gaertn.) tapers gradually upward 
from its small and sturdy base to where the magnificent uncut 
leaves, perhaps the largest in the world, curve gradually 
upward and outward. Or from a densely packed hillock of over¬ 
ground roots a cluster of perfectly straight, perfectly bare, 
slight-looking stems carries the most delicately cut leaves of the 
“ Manicole Palm ” (Euterpe edulis , Mart.), some to a height but 
little above the ground, others midway, and yet others piercing 
and overtopping the forest roof. Or a “ Pimpler Palm ” 
(Astrocaryum), generally of no great height, stands, its stem 
horrid with curious black thorns, long and flat and sharp. 
Many quaint growths also hang down from the forest roof 
into this forest chamber. Sometimes an Aroicl or a Fig, having 
perched itself aloft, has let down a single small root, as straight 
as a plumb-line, which either having reached the ground has 
there anchored and rooted itself or, without waiting to reach the 
ground, having sent out rootlets while its growing point still 
sways in the air, carries nutriment from the moisture-laden 
atmosphere to its parent above. Sometimes it is the leafless 
stem of a creeper, small it may be, or huge, round, or flat, or 
riband-like, or plaited, which hangs down from the roof in coils 
and loops and khots, or is stretched from tree to tree as taut as 
ever was rope. Sometime again it is the tree itself which, as 
if tired of drawing its water from so deep down as the earth to so 
high up as its own top, sends out masses of adventitious roots 
from some point on its own trunk, and so also draws an 
additional supply of moisture from the air. 
Yet there are breaks in this curious land of twilight. Some¬ 
times where a big tree has fallen and has carried with it many 
others—the prolonged crash of such a fall, which generally 
occurs in the stillness of the night, is a sound to be heard and 
then never to be forgotten—an oasis of light is formed. Some¬ 
times a creek washes aw T ay more or less of the trees, the branches 
